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"[My relationships were] like I was in these movies where the script was only half-written. When I’d get to the end of this half-script, the other actors wanted me to ad lib. But I had never gotten the hang of that. That’s why these movies were always box-office failures. Six of them in the past twenty years. I always blew the lines." ~ from my horrible first novel "Learn How To Pretend." (unpublished)(obviously)

~ Rumi

Monday, October 29, 2012

The following article was lifted from Scientific American. Please check them out at their own fine site.

By Scicurious |
October 29, 2012

Treating alcoholism is incredibly difficult on many levels. One
of the most difficult areas to deal with is social interaction, how
people with alcoholism can interact with others. Alcoholics can have
many problems with social exclusion. This is partially due to the severe
stigma that accompanies alcoholism, but it’s also due to the
difficulties that being an alcoholic can produce on social interaction.
Regardless, being an alcoholic can result in ostracism and a breaking
down of social support networks, and that can make recovery, especially
in times of stress, that much more difficult.But of course, it’s not just the act of being socially ostracized or
excluded, it also matters how the person being excluded responds. And
there are some indications that alcoholics have a larger response to
social exclusion than controls. But do they? And if so, why?Maurage et al. “Disrupted Regulation of Social Exclusion in Alcohol-Dependence: An fMRI Study” Neuropsychopharmacology, 2012.So the authors of this study wanted to look at how people with
alcoholism respond to things like social rejection compared to controls.
They took 22 recovering alcoholics (abstinent, all male, all inpatient
treatment and in the 3rd week of detox), and 22 controls, and put them
in an fMRI scanner to look at changes in blood oxygenation in the brian.
By determining where more or less oxygenated blood is going, fMRI gives
an idea of where more or less activity may be taking place.While in the fMRI, the participants played a “game”. The game was a
ball throwing game between themselves and two other “people” who were
really just computers. At first, the participant was told that they were
not yet connected to the computer, but they could watch the other two
people play the game (a condition called implicit social exclusion).
\Next, they “entered” the game and could pass a ball back and forth with
the other two players (social inclusion). After this, they were
explicitly excluded from the game, as the other “players” started only
throwing to each other. Finally, the participants got re-included in the
game, with the other players throwing the ball to them again.
When they looked at the results, they found that both groups, the
alcohol dependent and the controls, felt the same amount of social
exclusion during the exclusion part of the game.But their fMRI
responses showed some major differences. All participants saw increases
in activity in the cingulate cortex and ventral prefrontal cortex during
social exclusion. But the alcohol dependent patients showed less
ventral prefrontal cortex activity than controls, and also showed
additional increased activity in the insula. But of course, what does that mean?Activation in areas like the
ventral prefrontal cortex and the cingulate cortex is associated with
social rejection. In particular, the cingulate cortex and the insula are
associated with feelings of social rejection, while the ventral
prefrontal cortex provides some negative feedback and decreases
cingulate responses. So the author hypothesize that the alcohol
dependent subjects (1) show more response to social rejection, as they
have a response both in the cingulate and in the insula, and (2) that
they have a decreased ability to suppress the response to social
rejection, as they show decreased prefrontal activity. It’s an interesting study. Of course, we can’t prove immediately that
if you increase activity in the ventral prefrontal cortex, you’ll make
people feel less socially excluded, or that if you increase activity in
the cingulate and insula, people will feel left out. It’s probably more
complicated than that. But it’s very interesting to see that the alcohol
dependent subjects had differences in their brain responses to social
rejection, even thought they reported the same emotional response.And it makes me wonder how we might change these responses. The
authors saw these changes in the prefrontal areas which suggest that
maybe people with alcoholism cannot control or suppress a sense of
social rejection as well as controls. It would be very interesting to
see what happened to this signaling after a targeted behavioral therapy
intervention, or whether these signals are different in recovering
alcoholics with strong social support vs those without. It would also be
interesting to see if we COULD stimulate one of these areas and the
effect this might have on feelings of social rejection. Hopefully
studies like this are the first step to figuring out additional
therapies for alcohol dependent patients, to help them in their recovery
and make their new lives easier. Maurage
P, Joassin F, Philippot P, Heeren A, Vermeulen N, Mahau P, Delperdange
C, Corneille O, Luminet O, & de Timary P (2012). Disrupted
regulation of social exclusion in alcohol-dependence: an FMRI study. Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, 37 (9), 2067-75 PMID: 22510722

About the Author:
Scicurious is a PhD in Physiology, and is currently a postdoc in
biomedical research. She loves the brain. And so should you. Follow on
Twitter @Scicurious.

Sunday, October 28, 2012

“One thing you who
had secure or happy childhoods should understand about those of us who
did not. We who control our feelings, who avoid conflicts at all costs,
or seem to seek them. Who are hypersensitive, self-critical, compulsive,
workaholic, and above all survivors. We are not that way from
perversity, and we cannot just relax and let it go. We’ve learned to
cope in ways you never had to.”- Piers Anthony

Think about this one for a minute. How do you tell the truth? How do you tell the truth? The truth hurts. Truth is uncomfortable. I think maybe, if it's not, then it's mere flattery... said the guy with self-esteem issues.